By Nadine Moedt (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: March 4, 2015
“I’ll begin with my own experience, because if you’re writing fiction, if you’re writing books the way I have, you don’t start somewhere on a distant planet.”
So began Rudy Wiebe’s lecture on his experience as a refugee and “new colonialist,” whose family escaped Stalin’s Russia “by the grace of God” to find a new home in Saskatchewan — specifically, on the territory of Treaty 6, home of Canada’s Cree, Ojibwe, and Assiniboine Nations, among others.
Wiebe, a prolific and internationally prominent author and pioneer of Mennonite literature, spoke on his experience with Aboriginal Peoples growing up in a era of racist superiority, and on his understanding of colonialism in Canada.
The lecture was part of a speaker series offered by the peace and conflict studies program at UFV. According to UFV instructor Steven Schroeder, Wiebe’s discussion tied into PACS 200, “Conflict Analysis & Peacebuilding in the Fraser Valley” — a course which deals with “how personal experiences and viewpoints factor into conflict and peace-building work” and how these elements factor into unique facets of life in the Fraser Valley, such as relations between diverse cultural groups.
Considering the wide range of different ethnic and religious groups who call the Fraser Valley their home — from Mennonites, Japanese Canadians and Indo-Canadians to the Stó:l? Nation — studying the history and relationships between different groups is crucial to fostering understanding.
Rudy Wiebe was born not 40 miles from the birthplace (and living space) of his inspiration and “spirit mentor,” Chief Big Bear. It was a time of political and social upheaval; as his family cleared the boreal forest to make way for their farms and homesteads, a concept of racial superiority festered into a violent movement of social political forces. Nietzsche’s concept of the “Übermensch,” or the superhuman, became part of the cultural DNA, and those who were different suffered for it.
To Wiebe’s family, the land they had come to occupy seemed like it had always been empty.
“No one had ever lived there, we were first. Of course there were the Indians, we would say … they had perhaps long ago walked here, hunting, but what did that matter now?” said Wiebe. Their contact with the local First Nations was limited to buying smoked salmon. Government policy had intentionally isolated the reserves.
“They were all black-haired and dark-skinned — far away from us, thank God, we said. That’s the way it was. We white newcomers were contemporary pioneers.”
Wiebe further said that the conviction that God blessed the Mennonites because they were “hard-working Christian believers” has racist sentiments. The Mennonite Church had the habit of viewing Aboriginal groups as those “who should be evangelized and converted” into “little white men.”
Wiebe’s family rationalized this by categorizing Aboriginal Peoples as “past relics,” and “probably inferior.”
“As a child I did not comprehend that this was racism,” Wiebe said. This way of thinking fuelled what Wiebe describes as no less than an ethnic cleansing.
“Genocide usually begins with some conviction of racial superiority, that these are somehow inhuman people.”
Following the 1876 treaty that whisked away land, Aboriginal people were subjected to injustice after injustice; they were fenced into reserves, forbidden to practise cultural traditions, and suffered in residential schools.
“We must confess to ourselves that we are talking at the very least about attempted genocide for over a century,” said Wiebe.
Wiebe talked about his boyhood experience learning about the Cree chief Big Bear, who heroically attempted to resist white tyranny through peaceful protest.
“How can an Anabaptist novelist resist a character like that?” he said.
Following the publication of Wiebe’s book The Temptations of Big Bear, his life further intersected with the historical figure after he received a letter from the great Chief’s great-great-granddaughter.
These connections and experiences allowed Wiebe to see beyond the historically “typical Mennonite attitude toward Indian people” and work towards an understanding of experience and common humanness.
The lecture wrapped up with further discussion of how students can apply their experience to reducing conflict between different groups within the Fraser Valley.
